Friday, January 18, 2008

Greg Ballentine picks up on something I failed to mention in the Alex Ovechkin contract coverage last week, and I think it bears repeating:

From the standpoint of a GM, what does George McPhee have to lose in signing Alexander Ovechkin to a 13-year deal? McPhee's job is in jeopardy now. He could very possibly be fired this season or this summer. If he loses Ovechkin, the likelihood of that is increased. Ovechkin is one of the top players in the game and will in all likelihood be worth a huge salary — at least as long as he can stay healthy.

If the time comes that Ovechkin is no longer worth his salary cap hit or is no longer healthy, McPhee knows he will likely be long gone from the Washington organization. It is somebody else's problem. There is little downside to him personally.

Barring a trade, injury or buyout, he outlasts McPhee — and likely a host of other managers that will have to build a team around him.

It's something that's related to what's gone on here in Toronto with the Maple Leafs, where GM John Ferguson has essentially been given a one-year mandate to 'win now' with little regard for the future. He's dealt prospects for has-beens, first-rounders to cover mistakes, and signed ridiculously long, lucrative deals with ageing players like Jason Blake.

In short, it's been a mess.

But with the kind of longevity that Ovechkin, Mike Richards and Rick DiPietro — and, soon enough, quite a few others — will enjoy, what used to be a fairly long term for a GM will be nothing. McPhee, Paul Holmgren, Garth Snow and the majority of the others in NHL management positions are almost all dealing with that same 'win soon' mentality, especially with standings where everyone's still in the cluttered race.

It's pretty difficult to think of long-term ramifications when it's the games next week that matter, and you wonder just how many teams are betting the farm in the hopes of short-term success.

Judging by the nonsense that went on at the trade deadline last season, quite a few.

N.B. Ballentine lumps a lot of blame for the deal on McPhee, but in the Capitals' case there were a lot more hands in the pie and ownership certainly played a role in the length of the deal.

That, too, is something we have seen play out with ugly results in Toronto.

14 Comments:

And that's where the risk lies for the player. Ovechkin went on about how much he likes Washington and management etc and that's why he wanted to stay so long. But in 13 years he'll have gone through at least a few coaches, a couple GMs, maybe a new owner and all new teammates a few times over. What's to say he'll be just as happy at 27, 30 or 34 as he is at 22?

Depending how productive he is if/when he becomes unhappy with the current state of the franchise, he may be untradable due to the contract. Think about Jagr in Washington, without the ability for the Caps to pick up half his salary.. what would have happened to him?

McPhee did the job his owner wanted him to do. Wang negotiated exclusively with DiPietro... Snow wasn't all that privy to the direction of that deal. Richards I would think was a bit of a mutual agreement between Holmgren and Snider, though I can't be sure. Snider likes to be involved, so I assume he was on this monumental deal rather than as just a rubber stamp guy.

These are owners looking beyond the current GM. None of these GM's will be fired for this deal, they will be fired for not building winners around these cornerstones if it doesn't pan out.

What happens now will be interesting when one of these guys does get fired. Now a future GM applying for the opening will have to explain how they plan on building a winner around the player with the lifetime contract... he has no choice but to do so. It'll be interesting if this keeps certain potential candidates away from these teams with these contracts already on the books.

It'll be interesting if this keeps certain potential candidates away from these teams with these contracts already on the books.

Good observation.

I think it will be a negative for the best candidates, if they have a very clear idea of how they want a team to be built, and it doesn't include the owner's chosen cornerstone. They probably would shoot down any overtures very quickly if they don't want to be stuck with a particular player for the duration with no possibility of getting rid of him if he no longer fits in the team as being reconstructed.

Other than the fact that he wanted to keep Ovechkin, (duh!) I doubt McPhee was involved at all in these negotiations. In a contract of this magnitude, the owner, in this case Leonsis, would have been the one calling all the shots. McPhee may not have even been in the room when the final deal was reached. That's not a slam on McPhee, but rather the reality of a deal this size. When it gets that big, and it has to do with the future of the franchise, the responsibility has to rest with the guy who writes the cheques. That's the way it is in any business.

Again, the new CBA was designed to take matters out of the hands of GMs and leave it to the owners. The GMs no longer have as much power in terms of rule changes and contracts of this length are almost exclusively conducted by the owner.

It's been a constant theme in the business world that managers are rewarded for short term goals (profits this year) rather than long term goals, which are much more important to the health of the organization.

Until owners figure out that a long-term plan is more important than WIN NOW, GM's will always do what it takes to save their jobs, rather than what is best for their teams.

1) The Yashin/Ovechkin comparisons are ludicris. Yashin QUIT twice! His M.O. was well known BEFORE the Isles gave him that silly 10 year deal. 2) If Ovechkin were like Yashin he'd of waited till the summert to sign a deal then ask for the max allowed, 3) Yashin may be a great guy off the ice, but he has NEVER been known to be a real team leader. If fact he may very well have been a locker room cancer3) BTW, what does one's heritage got to do with it? We're sure any of a number of folks could name players of multiple nationalities who 'quit' once 'they got the money'

Lest it be forgotten, Wayne Gretzky set the early standard for extra-long-term contracts, signing a 21-year personal services contract for the unheard-of sum of $5 MM (for the lifetime of the contract, not per annum!) on the occasion of his 18th birthday, January 26, 1979. There happened to be a home game that night so Peter Pocklington, ever the showman, did it up right, signing Wayne at centre ice before the game, presenting him with two birthday cakes in the shape of 9s which added up to 18 but spelled out both his number and the expiry year of his fresh new contract! I remember being so excited about the prospect of watching this wunderkind for the next two decades (turned out to be just one in Edmonton) that the game itself assumed secondary importance, and frankly the whole Oiler team played it that way. I still have the program from that game, a 5-2 win by the Cincinnati Stingers, featuring second-period assists by Gretzky, Mark Messier and Mike Gartner, teenagers finding their professional legs in the WHA who would become three of the greatest scorers in NHL history.

The personal services clause protected Gretzky from the general rape and pillage that the NHL performed on the incoming WHA teams in the subsequent merger that fall. Gretzky did indeed play through 1999, but his contract was rewritten after a few years to pay him something closer to his actual value and to provide him some flexibility. But for most of his greatest years his extra-long-term contract was the best bargain in sports.

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About Me

A sportswriter at The Globe and Mail, James covers the NHL and the game of hockey. He is a member of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association, a radio and TV analyst with TSN and was the NHL network manager at SB Nation from 2008 to 2010. A graduate of Thompson Rivers and Ryerson universities, James grew up in Kamloops, B.C. — one of Canada's great hockey cities — and was a season ticket holder in the Blazers' glory years.

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